Men of War

by William R. Forstchen

  “Well, now the son of a bitch is broken,” he snarled.

  The room was silent.

  Reversing the revolver he held it casually in his hand, not pointing it at the telegrapher but not quite turning it away from him either.

  “If a word, if a single word of that message slips out of this room, I’m going to blame you personally,” he paused, his gaze sweeping the others, who stared at him nervously. “I’ll blame all of you. Do we understand each other?”

  No one answered; there was simply nodding all around.

  “I expect it’ll be at least a day before you can find a replacement for that machine.”

  “Ah, yes sir, days more likely.”

  “Fine.”

  “Sir, I have to enter something into the official logbook.”

  “Damn the logbook to hell,” he shouted, as he reached over, tore out several pages, and shredded them as well.

  “A shell hit this place, damn lucky anyone got out alive, damn lucky. Do we understand each other?”

  “Sir, you’re right.”

  “What the hell do you mean I’m right?”

  “Just that, sir.”

  “Don’t ever say that, boy, or you’ll hang with me. The rest of you keep me posted. We can maybe expect action by dawn. I want to know.”

  Tossing the pieces of paper on the packed-dirt floor he stalked out, tearing aside the blanket that acted as a curtain. Climbing out of the command bunker, he walked up onto the battlement and with a sigh leaned against the earthen embankment, gazing blankly at the rising moons. “You can’t keep it back forever.”

  It was Schneid, coming up to join him, proffering a lit cigar, which Pat gladly accepted.

  “I want good troops, old veterans we can trust,” Pat said. “Make it the First Suzdal. Be honest and tell them what’s going on. Get ’em on a train and head back up the line toward Roum. Turn command of your corps over to your second and go with them.”

  “Me? Pat, we both know those bastards over there are fixing to attack, maybe as early as tomorrow. I’m needed here.”

  “No, you’re needed more back there. Pick a good spot, say the bridge crossing that marshy creek about thirty miles back. That’s a good enough spot. Block the track, tear the bridge up a bit, then stop anyone who comes up that line. If the Chin ambassadors should happen to show up, arrest them or shoot them, I don’t care which it is at the moment.”

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Look, Rick. The government might not send anybody up at first, other than a couple of mealymouthed senators. If they do, arrest them as well.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Damn all, Schneid, I don’t care. Littering, soliciting for immoral purposes, public drunkenness, I don’t give a damn.”

  Leaning over, he rubbed his temples.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to blow on you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I just can’t believe that after everything we’ve been through it’s come down to this.”

  “I know.”

  “They might send troops, then.”

  “I know that, too. I’ll leave it up to you at that point. I don’t want our people killing each other, I’m not ordering you to do that.”

  “Pat, you can only keep this under wraps a day, two days at most. The army’s bound to find out. You can’t tie up every damn supply train coming this way. Word will finally get through.”

  “Two days, make it three, that’s all.”

  “For what?”

  “If need be, I’m going to try one more time.”

  “Try what?”

  Pat nodded toward the east.

  “To get across that damned river.”

  “Don’t even think it, Pat. You have no orders.”

  “Rick, everything’s breaking apart. The Republic, Andrew resigning, that last damned telegram telling us to inform the bastards on the other side of the river that we want a cease-fire. It’s all breaking apart. Well maybe it’s breaking apart over there, too. I’m willing to make one more try at it. I think they’ll hit first, then I plan to hit back with everything I have.”

  “Pat, give it another day. We still don’t know what’s happening with Vincent or Hans. Maybe they’ve succeeded. If so, the bastards here will have to pull back, and that could reverse the whole political situation at home.”

  Pat said nothing, staring at the rising moons.

  “All right then, one more day, but then, by God, I plan to go down fighting.”

  “With an army that’s no longer supposed to fight?”

  Pat smiled.

  “They don’t know that yet now, do they?”

  “You’re talking rebellion.”

  “Only you and I know that, my friend, and maybe a bit of rebellion is exactly what this country needs at this moment.”

  Chapter Twelve

  He had seen cities burn before, Fredericksburg, Suzdal, Kev, Roum, and only this morning it had been Xi’an. None of his nightmares, however, had prepared Hans for the apocalypse spreading from horizon to horizon. Huan, the great city of the Chin, was dying.

  It had started at dusk, a column of smoke to the east, a beacon, a warning, the column of smoke by day, and now the pillar of fire by night, and it seemed as if the world, the entire world, was doomed to a purging by flame for its sins.

  Even before nightfall the first refugees had come into his advancing lines seeking refuge. No one could explain how or why they knew to head west, it was as if a primal force of nature, chained for ten thousand years had been unleashed.

  While a slave he had learned something of the mystery, the Chin called it “wind words,” the strange almost supernatural way that news flowed through the slave camps, leaping like the chimera wind, bearing with it tiding of death, the choosing of who shall be next for the moon feasts, the distant whispers of wars. Before the Bantag even came to a barracks to lead someone away, already the news had arrived as “wind words.”

  Hans knew that in the world of master and slave, the slave was always present, standing by every table, every entryway to a yurt, always there were slaves, mute, dumb-looking, but always listening, and from mouth to mouth the word would spread of what had been decided. That was the only explanation he now could find. “Wind words” had floated into the city of Huan, miles away from where he had landed, bearing with it news of the spreading rebellion.

  Some of the refugees claimed that the Bantag garrison of Huan had started it, rounding up the appointed leaders of the city, taking them out beyond the walls to slaughter them all, that one of the leaders slew a Bantag, and thus the killing frenzy had started in the streets of the city. Others, that the Bantag were in a panic, fleeing the city, setting it aflame and sealing the gates with the intent of murdering the hundreds of thousands within. And yet others said that Cu-Han, the great ancestor god, had ridden into the city upon a winged horse and struck down Ugark, the Bantag Qarth of the city, the flaming light of his sword blinding the Bantag, and then proclaimed that the hour of liberation had come.

  He suspected he knew the truth. That all the stories were true. When word arrived of the air assault on Xi’an, and the following day the strike on the factories west of Huan, the garrison commander had panicked and ordered the roundup of all the Chin who were collaborators and managed the daily running of the millions of Chin who labored as slaves. Perhaps it was merely to interrogate, maybe even to take hostages to ensure that the people did not rebel, or stupidly it was with the intent to kill them all in retaliation. As for the god, that was a fascinating irony, the similarity in names, and if at the moment it helped to feed the rebellion, so be it. But as he looked at the thousands staggering past he could see the panic as well.

  Panic would feed on panic, the Bantag beginning the slaughter, and the population, after years of occupation, slavery, and terror, sensing that liberation was at hand, but now confronted by the death they had sought so long to avoid, would then turn like cornered rats, believ
ing that the gods themselves would now come to their aid.

  Sitting on the side of the wood tender of a Bantag locomotive, which was slowly pushing up the main line toward the city, he nursed the cup of tea given to him by the locomotive engineer, a Chin slave freed when they had seized the engine works adjoining the foundry where they had landed.

  The tea and a dirty chunk of hard bread were reviving him, and to his amazement he had actually managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep, the first in two days. Seeing that the cup was empty, the engineer gently took it from Hans, opened a hot water vent, filled the cup, then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a dirty rag, scooped out a precious handful of leaves, and threw them in, swishing the contents around.

  Hans nodded his thanks. Setting the cup down on the floor of the tender to let it cool a bit, Hans leaned out of the cab. A firefight was flaring up ahead, yet another walled-in compound; one of the men reported that it was a powder works. The complex stood out sharply, the burning city, still several miles off, illuminating the world. His skirmish line, deployed a half mile to either side of the tracks, was hotly engaged, beefed up now by thousands of Chin, some armed with cumbersome Bantag rifles, others with the precious pistols carried in on the aerosteamers and not left behind at Xi’an. Most were just a surging, milling horde carrying clubs, pitchforks, stoking rods, knives, heavy Bantag swords, and spears.

  Right through the middle of the fighting an endless column staggered to either side of the track, women clinging to screaming infants, frightened children clutching their mothers’ skirts, old men, women, lost children, all of them confused, terrified, moving west, trying to get out of the madness.

  He had detailed off a few precious troops to cull out anyone, man or woman, who seemed capable of fighting. In any other setting the gesture would be obscene, for all of them were little more than emaciated skeletons, the final dregs of the pit after years of existence in hell and the death of millions in the monthly feasts or dying to prop up the empire of the hordes.

  He tried to ignore them, to let his gaze linger for even a second on a lost child, or an exhausted mother lying in the mud and surrounded by screaming children would sap his will to continue the madness. He had come to try and free them, for they had become his brothers and sisters, yet now to free them he could do nothing but watch them die, and it was destroying him.

  They were all dead anyhow, he had to remind himself of that. For surely, once the Republic was destroyed, the Bantag would annihilate everyone here and then move on. Yet rather than feeling like a liberator he felt as if he was the angel of death, realizing that as he looked at the inferno enveloping the world, a hundred thousand or more must be dying this night.

  A blinding light ignited. Where the powder works had been a harsh white glare, brighter than a hundred suns, erupted, rising heavenward, the flash brilliance of it seeming to freeze everyone. By the light of the explosion the entire world came into a sharp-etched reality. Far to his left he could see the end of his battle line, a milling confusion, mounted Bantag swirling into a tangled mass of humanity. Straight ahead the track was clogged with people, all of them frozen, then falling, their cries drowned out by the earth-splitting thunderclap. The ragged line of infantry circling about the walled compound were turning, running back, flinging themselves to the ground.

  The fireball soared thousands of feet heavenward, the brilliant glare darkening into a sullen red hell, spreading out. The concussion stunned him. He staggered, leaning forward into the gale, the air hot and dry. More explosions ignited, crates of ammunition thrown heavenward, bursting asunder, millions of cartridges flaring, sparkling, streaks of fire plunging back to earth.

  The compound walls were down, blown asunder, providing a glimpse into the inferno. Bantag, looking like flaming demons, staggered out, flaying wildly at the agony that was consuming them, humans, dwarflike beside them, burning as well. A box of rifle cartridges crashed down beside the engine, exploding like a bundle of firecrackers, rounds pinging against the side of the tender.

  “Hans!”

  It was Ketswana, dragging several Chin behind him, all three dressed in the loose black coveralls marking them as men who worked aboard the locomotives. They were the precious few, allowed extra rations, exemption of their families from the feasting pit, and in the madness of the last few hours more than one had been beaten to death by those lower on the order of survival in this mad world and thus the special order to round them up not only for intelligence but also for their own protection.

  Ketswana climbed into the locomotive cab and, exhausted, slumped down to the floor, back against the pile of wood in the tender. Hans offered his cup of tea, and Ketswana greedily gulped it down, nodding his thanks when Hans offered a piece of hardtack. The three Chin rail workers he had dragged along were in the cab as well, talking excitedly to the engineer piloting Hans’s train, their words flowing so fast Hans could barely decipher what was being said.

  “They’re from the northern line,” Ketswana announced, still chewing on the dry bread.

  “Northern line?”

  “Remember, we knew they were laying a line up toward Nippon.”

  “And?” He felt a flash of fear.

  “We should have flown a few reconnaissance flights that way, Hans, before ordering Jack to take the remaining ships back to Xi’an.”

  It was a stupid mistake, damn stupid, Hans realized. He should have ordered Jack to circle out for a quick look around, but had yielded to the argument that if any of the aerosteamers were to survive, they had to get back to Xi’an before dark, refuel, patch up, and hopefully find a hydrogen-gas generator at the Bantag airfield. From there they could get back to Tyre the next morning. But now this.

  He knew that his releasing of Jack was also motivated by guilt. Jack had finally agreed to the attack, though he had insisted that the other pilots had to volunteer as well and could not be ordered. Of course all of them did volunteer, they were far too green to know when to say no, and none would ever allow himself to be called the coward.

  Only nine airships survived the assault intact and in some semblance of flying order. Close to five out of every six Eagle crews alive just two weeks ago were now dead. Jack and his boys were beyond the breaking point, and thus Hans had sent them home. His sentimentality might just have cost him the fight. He had had no idea of the completion of the rail line to the north.

  “The bastards didn’t just run the line up to Nippon,” Ketswana continued, “they hooked it all the way up to the line we were running along the north shore of the Sea!”

  Hans lowered his head, saying nothing. Damn! Six, eight hundred miles of track in a year. He didn’t think the Bantag were capable of it. Wearily, he looked down at Ketswana.

  “They have another route, Hans. Even though we cut the sea-lane, they can still move supplies by rail! Taking Xi’an means nothing; they can still keep the war going!”

  “We should have heard something,” Hans replied, his voice thick with exhaustion, his mind refusing to believe the dark reality this intelligence presented. “Prisoners, escaped slaves during the winter, something.”

  “The slaves working it were kept separate. They only finished it within the last month. Nearly all the supplies were still going down to Xi’an and moving by boat—it was easier. Now for the bad news.”

  He could already sense what it would be.

  “First off, they built some more factories up in Nippon and put the people to work. Hans, even if we smash this place up, they’ll still be able to produce weapons.”

  “We had to figure on that.” Hans sighed, trying to hide his bitter disappointment. So this would not be the crippling blow. The thought sank in with a brutal clarity that the war was indeed lost. Jurak would annihilate the Chin, perhaps stop for a while to regroup, then simply press on with the fight. He was afraid that in his exhaustion his despair would show. He lowered his head in order to hide his face.

  “And Hans. Those three Chin I rounded up,” Ketswana
continued, “were supposed to run a trainload of rails north this morning. They told me that even then word was already in the city that we had taken Xi’an. The Bantag were getting nervous, rounding up the families of the Chin rulers as hostages when we hit the factories west of here. That’s when all hell broke loose, and the city rioted.”

  “Kind of what we figured.”

  “That’s not the main point, though. These three were supposed to pull out with that load of rails when suddenly they got orders to wait in the rail yard. One of them, his brother worked on the telegraph line, said that messages were flying north, up toward Nippon, calling back two umens of troops.”

  Hans tried not to react.

  “We had to figure on resistance. If they only had two umens here covering their rear, we should be able to handle it.”

  “Hans, two umens of troops with modern weapons. They were sent back here after the Battle of Roum to refit. These Bantag are veterans. They’re deploying north of the city right now.”

  Hans looked back toward Huan. Damn all, it would have been the perfect place for a defensive fight. Like most Chin cities, it was a rabbit warren of narrow streets, laid out with no rhyme or reason. It had once housed over a million people. There was no telling how many were left after the years of occupation and slavery, but even with several hundred thousand he could have consumed half a dozen umens in a street-to-street fight.

  The pillar of fire filled the night sky, a vast inferno, a city thousands of years old dying in one final cataclysm. There was a flash of guilt. He knew that everyone who had lived in that city was doomed to die. Once the war a thousand miles to the north and west was finished, everyone here would have been massacred before the Bantag moved on. Yet still, as a slave he remembered far too well the clinging to life in spite of the doom. If one more day of survival could be wrung out of existence, that was all that counted, a day of numbing agony ameliorated by a warm bowl of millet at sundown, the gentle touch of a loved one sought in the middle of the night, the prayer that the night would last forever, the dawn and the agony that came with it banished by a dream.